‘He used to say I was nobody. I was shit on his shoes. I was a bug on the windscreen … a miserable, pathetic piece of garbage that he could toss away and nobody would miss me. Nobody would care.’ Tempe looks at me seriously. ‘Somebody has to stop him, Phil. He can’t keep doing this. He’s relentless. He’s like the Terminator. He never gives up.’ Her bandaged hand is beating at the air, like she’s hitting at a drum. ‘Someone has to kill him.’
Her solemnity makes me laugh. ‘Now you’re being melodramatic.’
‘How would you do it?’ she asks.
‘What?’
‘Kill him?’
‘I wouldn’t.’
‘With your karate, you could do it so easily.’ She makes a chopping motion with the same hand.
‘Karate is for self-defence.’
‘Yeah, but you could crush his windpipe; or drive his nose into his brain. I bet you could do it and nobody would ever know it was you. The perfect crime.’
‘There is no such thing,’ I say.
‘But if you get away with it?’
‘It’s still a crime.’
‘What if you make it look like an accident?’
‘That doesn’t make it perfect.’
‘Bad people get away with things all the time. Why can’t good people do the same?’
‘Good people don’t commit murder.’
‘When is it our turn?’
Her earnestness reminds me of my younger self, when I would argue with my mother about life being unfair because I couldn’t go to a party or a sleepover at a friend’s house. It was never my ‘turn’。 Back then I had no real concept of fairness. After three years as a police officer, I’m still not sure. Justice and fairness are like rain that falls more heavily on some people than others. People with umbrellas tend to stay dry. People on high ground avoid the flood. Rich people. Connected people.
Tempe is frowning at me, unhappy with the analogy. I laugh and she shakes her head before a shy smile breaks across her face.
As I’m leaving, I pick up the bag of rubbish, saying I’ll drop it at the bins. Tempe takes it from me and grimaces, swapping the bag to her good hand.
‘My bin is full.’
‘We have room in ours. I’ll take it home.’
‘No. That’s OK.’
We stand for a moment, holding the bag between us. Almost by default, I’m second-guessing Tempe, imagining all sorts of dark motives and twisted acts. Surely, she wouldn’t have killed a dog. She’s not a monster.
‘I’ll be praying for your father,’ she says as I descend the stairs.
‘You don’t believe in God.’
‘I believe in prayer.’
‘Who do you pray to?’
‘My heart speaks to the universe.’
37
I remember the first time I realised that my family was different. In Year 8 at St Ursula’s, the head teacher called a full school assembly and warned students about a local drug dealer. All of us knew who she meant. He wore jeans and an army jacket and normally sat on the low brick wall opposite the Greenwich Theatre, where he smoked cigarettes and chatted to people who were walking to the ferry or the station.
Whenever a transaction took place, the dealer would whistle to a young boy, who took the customer into a side street where money and pills were exchanged. The boy was only eight or nine and looked like the dealer’s younger brother.
I went home and told my mother about the assembly and she told my father. A few days later, as I walked to the station, I noticed Uncle Daragh talking to the drug dealer. I was going to wave, but they seemed to be having a grown-up conversation. Later, when I asked Daragh, he looked confused, saying I must have mistaken him for someone else, but nobody looks like Daragh, with his block-shaped head and his pale protruding eyes. I didn’t see the drug dealer or his brother again.
There are many stories like this one. Some are apocryphal, or exaggerated, but others I know to be true. Finbar has a crescent-shaped scar on his left side, below his ribs. He was stabbed twice in the stomach by a sharpened toothbrush in the prison exercise yard, but he took down three men before the guards arrived. When I asked him about the scar, he said, ‘Shark attack. Bondi Beach. 1985.’
One of Henry’s rugby mates told him a story about Uncle Clifton being charged with VAT fraud. Two days before the hearing, the main prosecution witness, a customs officer, disappeared from his house. Sixteen hours later, he walked into a police station three hundred miles away, looking pale and shaken, suffering complete memory loss. The case collapsed. Clifton walked free.
These are the reasons I have avoided my family, but there are other reasons for embracing them. Morality isn’t a rule, or a plumb line that swings back and forth. It is something that is part of each of us, like a gene that evolves over time; but unlike other genes, it is affected and altered by the decisions we make and don’t make, by compassion, empathy, forgiveness.
Late afternoon and I’m crossing Battersea Bridge, heading to the Royal Brompton Hospital. As I turn into King’s Road I hear the blast of a siren behind me and see flashing lights in my mirrors. I pull over, expecting the patrol car to pass me, but it angles to a stop in front of the Fiat. Was I driving too quickly? Did I fail to indicate? I know I’m distracted, but I’m a careful driver.
Two uniformed officers emerge from the car. Hitching trousers. Straightening hats. The driver approaches my lowered window. He smiles pleasantly, showing small teeth and wide pink gums. Maybe early thirties. A razor burn glows on his neck.
‘Can I see your driver’s licence?’
‘Of course.’ I reach into my jacket pocket. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘Is this your vehicle?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what’s your name?’
‘Philomena McCarthy. I’m a PC.’
‘Is that right.’
I get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
‘This vehicle was reported stolen last night.’
‘No. There’s been a mistake. If you run the number—’
‘Please get out of the car.’
‘Why?’
‘I need you to step out of the vehicle.’
His hand is resting on his baton. His partner is at the passenger-side window, cupping his hand against the glass. I step out of the car. The driver walks around the vehicle and I lose sight of him. A moment later, I hear a dull thud and the sound of something breaking.
‘You have a broken tail light,’ he yells.
I walk to the back of my Fiat and discover the broken casing and the shards of plastic lying in the gutter.
‘This is bullshit,’ I mutter.
‘What did you say?’ asks the driver.
I take a deep breath and tell myself to relax and not make things worse.
‘Step away from the vehicle.’
I do as he asks, moving to the pavement where a handful of people have gathered to watch. One of them has a mobile phone. A teenager. Unkempt hair. Bum fluff on his chin.
‘Can you film this for me, please?’ I ask. The teenager lowers his phone for a moment, unsure of what to do. ‘Please,’ I say again.
The first officer pushes me against a wall, ordering me to brace my hands and spread my legs. He kicks my legs wider apart and roughly pats me down, touching me in places that should be private. His colleague is searching my car, lifting the floor mats and looking under the spare wheel. I keep turning my head, watching him, worried he might plant evidence. The teenager is still filming.